


Ideal

by ittybittytidbits



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Exotic Dancer, F/M, Gen, Other, allusion to masturbation, belly dancer, body typing, mike and levi play hooky, mitras bars, sort of canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24022252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ittybittytidbits/pseuds/ittybittytidbits
Summary: Levi meets a belly dancer for the first time.
Relationships: Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Original Character(s), Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Reader
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	Ideal

It was. Fate. Accident. A machination of Mike’s.

Whatever it was, it had brought him here. This place of dim voices and soft lights, of tables and plush chairs crowded under shadows.

Beside him, Mike grinned. Giddy, like a schoolboy who’d skipped lessons and got away with it. Not that Levi would know first hand what it was like to be a schoolboy.

Out of uniform, they skulked the perimeter of the dark tables populated with well-dressed, well-coiffed gentlemen. A few of them were joined by women - painted, with stiffly curling hair, dark brows, and red lips. Laughing women, their mirth measured, rounded out by bosoms trapped between smooth arms; arms that glowed in the flickering candlelight atop the linen-clad tables.

Levi had no doubt that, if left to his own devices, Mike would order himself one of those women - they looked like the sort of women to be ordered as if off a menu: blonde, brunette, or red haired? Statuesque, or petite?

Mike followed them all with his eyes.

He was here, Levi reminded himself as a hostess with downcast lashes anda coy, quirking smile showed them to their table, to ensure discretion. Or as much discretion as could be salvaged in a place such as this. For even in their civilian garb, out here at the hems of Wall Sina, they were recognizable, he and Mike. Humanity’s first and second strongest.

Military police officer in their position, Levi was sure, would have no qualms about being seen in a place like this. But Levi also liked to think that he was superior to them, and a sense of morality, or propriety, or even loyalty to his regiment, drove him to ensure the preservation of (Mike’s) decorum, as well as to do all in his power to keep this outing strictly clandestine.

If they were recognised, there was no indication of it. As spirits were brought to their table, the hostess threw them a last smile - this time a slow, upwards curl of her meticulously shaped lips - and swayed away to attend to incoming patrons, the train of her skintight evening dress shimmering in her wake.

Levi cast his companion a look. Mike grinned around his mouthful of premium alcohol, waggled his eyebrows, and as if reading the question in Levi’s mind said,

“This place is famous for its shows.”

As luck would have it, tonight was apparently show night.

Tonight, the eve of their return to Wall Rose and their barracks, where the potent clouds of perfume in this place would dissipate as in a dream.

Speaking of dreams, not a single military man probably dreamed that a routine reportorial trip to the Inner District would find soldiers in the lair of the bored wealthy.

Then again, Levi supposed, everyone was entitled to their little indulgences. He picked up the cut glass of alcohol, gave it a curious sniff, and sipped it.

Bitterness soaked through his tongue. Warmth cascaded from his throat down to his chest, to the top of his belly.

He returned for a longer draught, this time with Mike’s merry eyes twinkling knowingly at him.

As the liquor streamed in rivulets around the sides of his stomach, soft music began to strike up from the front of the hall. Patrons stopped their hushed conversation and all were plunged, as if yet possible, into deeper dimness.

The air crackled with the rising music. Rare drums beating out an even rarer tempo, pierced suddenly by the shrill lilt of an anonymous instrument. Torches flared to light with an intake of air, illuminating the veiled form folded upon the red orange floor.

The music coaxed it to life.

_ It _ was a woman, skin glossy under the firelight, gleaming from a whisper of slathered oil. She writhed upwards, supple arms raised as if wakening from sleep, tossing hair back; whipping it free.

The alcohol, forgotten, sat untouched on the table. But the tails of the earlier draught, still rippling inside him, pooled suddenly in Levi’s groin.

Her drums beat out a cry. The woman, the dancer, arched backwards, flashing arms waterfalling over her head of tumbling curls, to the floor. She seemed flayed open, breasts straining behind embellished fabric above her shining belly, the rest of her still swathed with gauze.

Levi never thought women could be so soft.

He was no virgin, and during his stint with the military had seen all manner of female forms to last him a lifetime. He’d categorised women’s bodies into three: skinny girlishness, militarily toned, and buxom matronliness.

Until this day, this moment when this mirage moved serpentine before his eyes, he could put no image to the word ‘voluptuous’. He did not think women could be so sinfully decadent; did not think they could have such soft, round arms, smooth stomachs padded ever so slightly with flesh that no man in his right mind could resist twirling such bodies with his hands.

She flew with exotic abandon, skirts lifting as she twirled across the dancefloor, the multicoloured fabrics fanning round and round supple calves, flashing the glint of thick gold anklets, laden with bells, jingling at the crests of her feet.

Mike was grinning like a knowing conspirator. Levi saw him out of the corner of his eyes but could not, for the life of him, nor for the sake of his dignity, tear his gaze away from the dancing woman.

When she moved, her body undulated, all cadenced frenzy. Her hips, heavy with criss-crossed trinkets, swirled Levi into madness.

An ancestral desire welled up in him. The woman’s ecstatic dancing ignited a  _ something _ , a common, inherited human instinct repressed by this sub-human world.

He committed to memory the uninhibited rippling of her body. In his mind’s eye, she was only an arm’s length away. He could reach out and the pads of his fingers would brush her garments. She shook in a rapturous shudder, and yet another of her veils would fall, perfumed with rare orchid, fluttering onto his lap. She would dance between his spread knees, flicking him with the plushness of her hair. As she swayed, he felt her skin, baby smooth and firm.

Beneath the table, his hands clenched. He imagined them around her arms, exploring that coveted, that perfect, that unmarred stomach. Imagined the heft of her body; felt the twin columns of her twirling legs knock fleetingly against the insides of his thighs.

He imagined her. Saw her coming to him. Dancing for him. Gyrating for him, neck bared, hips roiling to the tune of his breaths.

He sat imagining - seeing clearly - for the longest time, so that it took Mike’s rumbled teasing to shake him from his thoughts.

For ever after, Levi would deny having been affected by their secret little side trip. But for ever after, especially when he lay in the privacy of his chambers, a hand stuffed down his trousers, he would see her as he did that night. She would dance her sinewy dance in his mind’s eye, and he would hold her up, for ever after, as the benchmark against which ideal feminine beauty must thereafter be measured.

**Author's Note:**

> Was going to take a writing/editing break from Bedroom Politics for today to slog through the last chapters of Doctor Zhivago, but this idea took root and just wouldn't let me read in peace.
> 
> Inspired by Raul Ferrando's "Yearning" and the myriad versions of the Dance of the Seven Veils.
> 
> Features a tumblr headcanon that body type ideals vary within the three walls, and that within Wall Sina, fuller figures are preferred. I imagine a 1950s type of figure, a la Rita Hayworth, with a Constance Bennett-ish (Topper, 1937) red lip.
> 
> Must be obvious by now that my biggest vice is old movies. haha


End file.
